Your assignment is to read the term paper submissions of two classmates, and write an analysis (similar to what you did for Ex 4, where you evaluated an academic article).  Ex 8 should be about 3 pages long.

Remember that a peer critique is an act of frendship and solidarity. You can't boost your own grade by tearing down your classmate, and nobody is going to benefit if you flatter your classmate excessively. Constructive criticism notes both strengths and weaknesses, and the presentation of weaknesses should be phrased helpfully, without any gloating or pettiness. (I don't think this group will have that problem, but it's a standard reassurance that I offer.)

For each of your two chosen paper papers, respond to the following. (Note that these questions may also help you as you finalize your draft.)

1) What specific, non-obvious claim does this paper support? (That's another way of asking for the thesis... remember that "There are many interesting things to say about X" or a question like "Is X an instance of A?" or "People who kick puppies are bad" are not thesis statements that require academic argument.)

2) What opposing or alternative arguments does this paper address?

3) If this were your draft, what would you be the most proud of? (Be specific.)

4) If this were your draft, and you had more time to work on it, what do you feel would be the most beneficial change? (Again, be specific.)

5) Include me on the CC line in an e-mail in which you share your analysis with your classmate.

I've created the Turnitin.com slot and set it for 2pm. 

You are free to use this page to arrange to swap papers with 2 classmates, in preparation for Ex 8.

On your blog, post a comprehensive, detailed, richly-linked blog entry designed to generate discussion about a topic related to your term paper. I'd like you to think of the oral presentation as the more daring, hipper cousin of your buttoned-down and formal term paper. Try out an idea you don't fully understand yourself. If you're still trying to make up your mind about something, try to do that here.

To submit your work, post a link from this page to the URL of your entry.

The idea is to post an original essay on your site, full of links to good material online (such as interviews with game designers, newspaper stories or academic articles, screenshots, perhaps videos of people playing the game(s) you're focusing on), all coming together to teach the class an important concept. 

Don't spend time summarizing what you find elsewhere in the internet -- make your point as efficiently as possible, and link to where your reader can get the full article you're citing.

Ask questions, spark conversations, teach us something we don't know, demonstrate your ability to apply concepts taken from the course readings (and the maxims such as "all art is constrained" or the mirror/window/lens model).

We've already looked at Leslie's presentation on Lara Croft. That should give you a good idea of what to shoot for.

Compile a list of about 10 credible sources for your research paper. Summarize the content of the article in a short paragraph (with special attention to the author's thesis.)  Evaluate the article (with special attention to how it will help you create a strong research paper.) 

You may include texts on the syllabus, or texts that you have found on your own. I recognize there may be value in non-academic sources, such as interviews with designers or reviews in magazines or on personal weblogs, but when you are writing a scholarly paper, you should draw mostly from scholarly sources (such as journal articles, full-length books, or a single essay published as part of a collection).

Begin with a full MLA-style citation, as you would format it for a Works Cited list.  Unlike a WC list, however, I'm asking you to follow each entry with a short summary of the article (explaining what the author was trying to do), and following that with another short paragraph that explains how this specific item will help you explore the topic you are choosing for your term paper.

If you're doing a term paper on Sim City, I don't expect you to find ten peer-reviewed articles on Sim City. You will probably find a handful of great sources that at least mention Sim City in passing, but other articles might be even more useful if they discuss simulation games in general.  An article that doesn't even mention games at all, but instead discusses some aspect of city planning in the real world, may be extremely useful.

Here's an example of an annotated bibliography on interactive fiction. My evaluations are all based on how useful each item is for those who are interested in studying interactive fiction. (You don't have to assign a ranking to each item, but you should still evaluate it -- this means you need to move beyond summarizing what the item contains, and instead focus on explaining why a specific quoted passage will help you accomplish a certain intellectual task... thus, I asked you to read Jesper Juul's early essay not because it perfectly matched my own opinions, but rather because I wanted you to see how much Juul's opinion changed over time.)

You don't need to commit to using all 10 of these items in your term paper. You don't have to use ANY of them... my goal is not to force to you to lock yourself in this early, but rather to ensure that you're exposing yourselves to the kind of meaty arguments that will help you to come up with a thesis that engages with the ideas you find in the scholarly sources.

Asking you to do this bibliography research now is my attempt to prevent the horrible experience you will face if you write your paper first (based only on ideas from your own head), and then "look for quotes" to support the argument you have already made.  (It makes far more sense to find good quotes first, and then develop a thesis statement that you can actually support based on the evidence you've already found.)

As always, please feel free to contact me with questions or comments.

Demonstrate your ability to use material from the book to illustrate your growing understanding of the study of video games.

Ex 5 is advance work for your term paper. Your goal for the term paper is to use scholarly research (which includes a careful examination of primary texts -- in our case, a specific game or several games, as well as secondary texts -- in our case, academic articles and books) to defend a non-obvious claim about video game culture and theory.  Your thesis should be worth arguing about -- that is, you should present and account for (that is, refute) credible evidence that opposes the claim you want to make.

Ex 5 asks you to do some important advance work for your term paper.  You are free to change your thesis, your topic, and your whole approach after you complete this exercise, so don't feel that this exercise is supposed to lock you in.  It's simply supposed to ensure that you start the process of writing your research paper the right way -- by seeking out academic research first, and then coming up with an appropriate thesis that is supported by the available research. (Don't write your paper first and then "look for quotes" to support the opinion you had formed before you looked at any scholarly works... the arguments within the scholarly works are the building blocks you use in order to create your thesis.)

For Ex 5, supply the following information:

Roughly the first third (Preface to Chapter 4)

Read my review of Fatworld, and draw on your exposure to our textbook, Persuasive Games. What do you think? Comment over on my blog, or create a new entry on your own blog. (Demonstrate your ability to apply the material you've learned so far.)

Post a new entry on your blog, and highlight the best work you have done since the last blogging portfolio was due. There will be fewer entries this time, so depth and interaction are important.

This exercise is a quick check to make sure you have the research skills that will be necessary to do well on your term paper. If you've taken STW, then this will be a simple review.

A habit you may have learned in high school is to write a full draft of a paper that supports the point that you want to make, and then "finding quotes" from scholarly sources that agree with your position. But that defeats the purpose of writing a research paper... you're supposed to learn as you research... maybe you'll even change your mind, based on the information and argument you encounter. So, before I ask you to come up with a thesis for your research paper, I'm going to ask you to show me that you know how to find and read academic articles.

1. Find a peer-reviewed academic article on a topic of video game studies that closely interests you.  Some online journals include Game Studies, Kairos, and Games and Culture, but you will also find articles about games in many other journals. (I found 278 hits for peer-reviewed, full-text articles containing the words "video game" in the EBSCOhost database at Reeves Library... there are far fewer when I search for specific games, but as you'll see, it's OK if you can't find any articles written about the game you want to study. Supply a full MLA-style reference for the article.
2. Quote the author's main thesis. (That is, what is the single main claim that this author makes?)
3. What evidence does the author use in order to support the main idea? Please don't go through my list and answer "yes" or "no" for each pf the following suggestions... my goal is to get you to think about what evidence the authors are offering.
• Has the author conducted a scientific experiment, putting 50 kids in a room with video games and 50 kids in a room with TV, and then counted how many fights broke out?
  
• Did the author merely ask the parents of the kids to answer a survey about the level of aggression the kids showed?
  
• Did the author show 20 girls games about war and 20 boys games about make-up, and then interview the kids afterwards to see what they thought? 
  
• Did the author spend 6 months playing the game as a guild with other researchers, in oder to gain first-hand evidence?
  
• Is the author quoting from scholarly works, published reviews, interviews with gamers, Congressional testimony, or dialogue contained in the games?
  
4. What alternative or opposing ideas does the author reject (in order to build up support for the main idea)?
5. What are the sources for the author's presentation of evidence that works against the author's thesis?
   
6. How does an academic article differ from 6A) a traditional game review, and 6B) New Games Journalism?
   

http://www.fatworld.org/

Download it (for PC or Mac), play it, and use your knowledge of games (from Koster, Laurel, Juul, Aarseth, and other sources we have read) to analyze it. Take a look at the course objectives on the syllabus page, and do your best to demonstrate your ability to apply what you have learned.  

For tomorrow's discussion, construct a well-thought-out thesis statement, which makes a non-obvious claim (something deeper than "This game is fun/boring" or "This game makes a point about food").  Make a claim that a reasonable person might disagree with, rather than issuing a polished, carved-in-stone pronouncement that only a fool would dare challenge. Quote the exact words of the sources you consult; include the page number of the direct quote.  All this is practice for the skills you'll need to develop a good term paper.

The in-game tutorial is long, and it's not immediately clear how to exit out of some windows (the circle with the X in it is not close enough to where the information is listed), and when the message "enter" appears on the screen, I keep wanting to push the "enter" button (rather than space, which is what the game expects). Feel free to post your initial reactions about playing this game.

Last week I first introduced you to an early paper by Jesper Juul in which the author challenged the centrality of fiction in the study of games. I then asked you to read a book in which Juul said games are both fiction and rules.  Last week, I introduced you to Espen Aarseth's term "ergodic." Now I'm asking you to look at this article, which challenges a central tenet of game studies -- that what matters is games is the playing. Newman seems to have a good concept of how games can be significant to a group of people, even when only one is playing at a time. He makes a clear argument -- and this is why I've chosen this article, so that you can see how scholars in any developing field advance the boundaries of their understanding by disagreeing with each other -- by saying, "Sure, your idea works for the examples you chose, but what about *this* case?" http://www.gamestudies.org/0102/newman/ 

The pleasures of videogames are frequently enjoyed by those that commonsense might encourage us to consider as non-players - "onlookers" that exert no direct control via the game controls. In this article, I want to suggest that videogame players need not actually touch a joypad, mouse or keyboard and that our definition needs to accommodate these non-controlling roles. The pleasure of videogame play does not simply flow through the lead of a joystick.